I can see The Six Stats as being useful, but do we really need Strength and Constitution?
Edit: Hadn't yet noticed Hylarn already cutlisted those. I say cut the latter two but leave the former.
Edited by macroscopic Support stupid freshness, yo.
It's not a trope though, it's D&D mechanics. We don't have or need a page explaining how the sanity system in Call Of Cthulhu works.
The thing is, the Six Stats or close variants thereof make their way into systems that aren't directly D&D. They're common in Roleplaying Games that aren't Tabletop Games. And if someone who is only passingly familiar with this sort of thing thinks of stats, then it's likely to be these.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney
How about we rename it Base Stats and have it detail base stats (the statistics from which most derived statistics are calculated) in general, with examples being base stats from various different systems and games?
This is not entirely accurate. In the 90s, game designer Stephen O'Sullivan noted that most of these "six stats" are arbitrary and change from roleplaying game to roleplaying game. Although Strength is, admittedly, common, traits such as "Magic" or "Sanity" or even "Relationship with Parents" show up across the board. Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Chr isn't really indicitive of anything except D&D.
I'm with Eric DVH; we don't seem to have a good page discussing the standard Base Stats. Isn't magic skill sometimes a stat of its own and sometimes hinging on some combination of Wis, Int, and Chr?
I'm just glad no-one's actually started putting up examples of how high they think particular characters' stats are, even though the last part of the page is written as if that's what you're expected to do.
By the way, this doesn't even reflect D&D on the whole; I know 2nd and 3rd editions and it only sounds like the latter. In 2nd edition, numbers above 18 were dramatically superhuman so that a huge giant's strength score might only be 21, even though if actual strength had been linearly scaled to the number (whatever that might mean exactly), it wouldn't even be able to move with a few points higher than human(ly possible) strength. 3rd edition still seemed to have a slight bias in this way but would admit that eg. a moderately large animal like a horse should already have a 20+ Str score.
What this all leads to is that the numbers are definitely not a good thing to have there, even if they might roughly reflect a couple of different systems besides D&D.
Edited by VVK
Yes, this page is quite specifically D&D, though many other systems are based off it. Perhaps we should list some common differences among non-D 20 System games.
i.e. Consolidation: Two or more stats are consolidated into one.
- Ironclaw has Body, Mind, Speed, and Will.
Expansion: More than six basic stats.
- Call of Cthulhu has Strength, Constitution, Power, Dexterity, Appearance, Size, Intelligence, and Education.
Spin-off stats: A base stat influences a more advanced stat. Almost exclusively used by Point Build Systems where the advanced stats can be increased more cheaply than the basic stats.
- In GURPS Strength influences Hit Points, IQ influences Will and Perception, Fatigue is based on Health, and Basic Speed is (HT+DX)/4.
Different tiers: 10-11 is not always average.
- In Traveller the average for any stat is 6-8, 15 is the highest a human can get without augmentation.
This looks like Useful Notes, or even a real RPG trope. The description part is useful...
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney Hide / Show Replies